Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compound-eye image-pickup apparatus.
Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. (“JP”) 2005-303694 proposes a compound-eye image-pickup apparatus configured to capture an image so that short and long focus lenses having different angles of view contain the same portion of the object. International Publication WO008/050904 discloses an image-pickup apparatus configured to obtain a two-dimensional light intensity distribution of an object space and ray angular information or parallactic information using a camera array having the same angle of view. The two-dimensional light intensity distribution and the ray angular information are collectively referred to as a light field, which can provide three-dimensional information of the object space.
JP 2010-50677 discloses an image-pickup apparatus that includes an image sensor configured to provide pixel additions and thinning reading. The image-pickup apparatus is configured to reduce a burden of arduous setting of an image-pickup condition by automatically determining, when one of the output pixel number, the image-pickup sensitivity, and the frame rate is set, the remaining two items.
Ren Ng, “Fourier Slice Photography,” ACM Trans. Graph. 24, 2005, pp. 735-744 discusses refocusing.
Nevertheless, no compound-eye image-pickup apparatus has been proposed, which can automatically and appropriately set a combination of an output pixel number, a frame rate, and an available function with at least one of a plurality of imaging optical systems, so as to improve the operability. A user usually has no idea of which of the plurality of imaging optical systems provides which of the above functions. JP 2010-50677 does not consider the efficiency of the setting method in this compound-eye structure.